Welcome to the Conservative Revolutionary American Party's BLOG. Conservative in that we believe in the Constitution of the U.S.A. We are Revolutionary in the way that our founding fathers were in throwing off the bonds of tyranny. We are American in that we are guided by Native American Spirituality; we ARE responsible for the next 7 generations. We are a Party of like minds coming together for a common cause. This BLOG is a clearing house of information and ideas.
PEACE…………Scott

Followers

Impeach the Supreme Court 5

So Far ???? / About Me

Obama has made good on some promises but they haven't been implemented yet. I'm still withholding judgment until I see the outcome...which could be some time since the Repugs have continued their partisanship tactics. Time will tell. We have a long way to go but I THINK that we are at least trying to look at things differently....once again, time will tell. So I say to all "Good Luck & Good Night".......PEACE....Scott

Although purely speculative, it is possible thatsuch inverse associations may reflect a protectiveeffect of marijuana. There is recent evidence fromcell culture systems and animal models that 9-tetrahydrocannabinol, the principal psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, and other cannabinoidsmay inhibit the growth of some tumors bymodulating key signaling pathways leading togrowth arrest and cell death, as well as by inhibiting tumor angiogenesis. These antitumoral associations have been observed for several types ofmalignancies including brain, prostate, thyroid,lung, and breast.

America's workers need jobs, and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is calling on them to stand up and fight. Trumka joins Bill Moyers to offer his perspective on the State of the Union and explains why he thinks President's Obama's plans - and the Republicans' agenda alike - might mean a lost decade for America. Trumka has previously worked as a coal miner, a lawyer and president of the United Mine Workers of America. Also on the program: Are America's elections now up for sale? The Journal explores what the Supreme Court's decision means for campaign finance reform and the future of our democracy with progressive legal experts Monica Youn and Zephyr Teachout. Monica Youn directs the campaign finance reform/money in politics project at NYU's Brennan Center for Law and Justice and Zephyr Teachout teaches law and politics at Fordham University's School of Law.

All republished content that appears on Truthout has been obtained by permission or license.

Laura Flanders, GRITtv: "Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders has been an outspoken leader in the Senate on everything from the fight for single-payer health care reform to blocking Fed Chair Ben Bernanke's reappointment. The Vermont legislator has won election and re-election by continually communicating with and fighting for the people, and he offers his advice to progressives and to President Obama in this exclusive interview with GRITtv." Read the Article

Despite 234 years of progress toward the American ideal of equality for all, we still have to battle unfairness.

How happy, then, to learn that a handful of our leaders in Washington took bold and forceful action last week to lift another group of downtrodden Americans from the pits of injustice, helping them gain more political and governmental power. I refer, of course, to corporations.

Say what? Corporations should get more power over our elected officials?

So, they did. "They" being the five doctrinaire corporatists who now form the majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. Let's remember their names: Sam Alito, Anthony Kennedy, John Roberts, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. These five men, on their own whim, have executed a black-robed coup against the American people's democratic authority.

They took an obscure case involving a minor violation of election funding law and turned it into a constitutional upheaval. Rushing their handpicked case through the system, they issued a 5-4 decision on Jan. 21 that overturns a century of settled American law and more than two centuries of deep agreement in our Land of the Free that the narrow interests of corporations must be subjugated to the public interest.

Indeed, the founders of our Republic saw corporate power as an inherently selfish and perpetual danger to democracy, and most leaders of that day believed that corporate entities should have no role whatsoever in politics. Thomas Jefferson bluntly declared in 1816 that the country must "crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations."

The Alito-Kennedy-Roberts-Scalia-Thomas cabal, however, has unceremoniously dumped the wisdom of the founders, along with volumes of American judicial precedent, to assert that poor little corporations today are victims of political "censorship" by Congress, states and cities that have outlawed the use of corporate funds in elections. Such restrictions, ruled the five usurpers, violate the "free speech rights" of corporations, putting corporate interests at a disadvantage with other political interests.

Disadvantage? This would be hilarious, were it not so dangerous. No other group in American has anywhere near the voice and raw political power that corporations exert every day. Campaign donations from individual corporate executives (and from their PACs, 527s, front groups and other channels) total hundreds of millions of dollars each election year, effectively shouting down the voices of ordinary folks (the Wall Street bailout being but one sterling example).

Yet the Court has just handed these political powerhouses their wildest dream: access to the multi- trillion- dollar ocean of funds held within the corporate entities themselves. Every business empire -- from Wall Street to Wal-Mart, Exxon Mobil to the China Overseas Shipping Company (yes, the five wise guys even waved foreign corporations into our political funfest) -- can now open the spigots of their vast corporate treasuries and send a raging torrent of their special interest cash into any and all of our national, state and local elections.

Two legal perversions are at work here. First, the Court has equated the freedom to spend money with the freedom of speech. But if money is speech, those with the most money get the most speech. That's plutocracy, not democracy, and it's totally alien to our Constitution, as well as a gross distortion of the crucial principle of one person-one vote.

Second, a corporation literally cannot speak. It has no lips, tongue, breath or brain. Far from being a "person," a corporation is nothing but a piece of paper -- a legal construct created by the state as a mechanism for its owners to make money.

Actual people in the mechanism (shareholders, executives, workers, retirees, lenders, et al.) can and do speak politically -- in many diverse voices that express very different viewpoints. But the corporate entity, which the court cabal is trying to turn into a Frankenstein monster, is inanimate, incapable of thought, inherently mute and, in itself, no more deserving of human rights than a trash can would be.

Copyright 2010 Creators.com

All republished content that appears on Truthout has been obtained by permission or license.

This past week we lost another voice that we could not afford to lose. Howard Zinn has moved on but has left us with a wealth of knowledge, research, and insight that we need to take heed of. Below are links to articles from across the board concerning his passing.

Howard, thank you............you will be remembered and missed.............Scott

Our country lost one of its greatest patriots yesterday, and I lost a friend and longtime role model and inspiration, when historian and activist Howard Zinn passed away. I still remember as if it were yesterday the first time I ever saw him.

Howard Zinn: A Public Intellectual Who MatteredHenry A. Giroux, Truthout: "In 1977 I took my first job in higher education at Boston University. One reason I went there was because Howard Zinn was teaching there at the time. As a high school teacher, Howard's book, 'Vietnam: the Logic of Withdrawal,' published in 1968, had a profound effect on me."Read the Article

imagining a coalition aimed at "independence from the military-corporate alliance," with a platform that includes strong planks on climate, jobs, health, ending the present wars, major reductions in the military, transforming campaign finance, and ending the filibuster.

By Harvey WassermanHow the great Howard Zinn made all our lives betterHoward Zinn was above all a gentleman of unflagging grace, humility and compassion.He was a warm, unfailingly friendly compadre. He shared a beautiful partnership with his wonderful wife Roz, a brilliant, thoroughly committed social worker about whom he once said: "You and I just talk about changing the world. She actually does it."

By arn specterA Tribute to Howard ZinnHoward Zinn, noted teacher, historian and activist, passed on to Spirit on Wednesday, Jan.27, 2010. This is my tribute to him.

Zinn, author of People's History of the United States, recently behind the History channel's The People Speak, passed away while traveling. An opednews.com interview with Zinn was published two days before his death.

By Chris FloydClass Acts: Farewell to Chroniclers of American RealityAmerica lost two distinctive and important voices this week, two writers whose works dealt with absolutely vital but virtually ignored elements of the nation's history and character: the 'marginal' classes and the ruling class. Without the histories of Howard Zinn and the fiction of Louis Auchincloss, we would have a poorer understanding of the forces that form and move our society.

The recent Supreme Court decision to allow unlimited corporate spending in politics just may be the straw that breaks the plutocracy’s back.

Pro-democracy groups, business leaders, and elected representatives are proposing mechanisms to prevent or counter the millions of dollars that corporations can now draw from their treasuries to push for government action favorable to their bottom line. The outrage ignited by the Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission extends to President Obama, who has promised that repairing the damage will be a priority for his administration.

But what can be done to limit or reverse the effect of the Court’s decision? Here are 10 ideas:

Amend the U.S. Constitution to declare that corporations are not persons and do not have the rights of human beings. Since the First Amendment case for corporate spending as a free speech right rests on corporations being considered “persons,” the proposed amendment would strike at the core of the ruling’s justification. The push for the 28th Amendment is coming from the grassroots, where a prairie fire is catching on from groups such as Public Citizen, Voter Action, and the Campaign to Legalize Democracy.

Require shareholders to approve political spending by their corporations. Public Citizen and the Brennan Center for Justice are among the groups advocating this measure, and some members of Congress appear interested. Britain has required such shareholder approval since 2000.

Pass the Fair Elections Now Act, which provides federal financing for Congressional elections. This measure has the backing of organizations representing millions of Americans, including Moveon.org, the NAACP, the Service Employees International Union, and the League of Young Voters. Interestingly, the heads of a number of major corporations have also signed on, including those of Ben & Jerry’s, Hasbro, Crate & Barrel, and the former head of Delta Airlines.

Give qualified candidates equal amounts of free broadcast air time for political messages. This would limit the advantages of paid advertisements in reaching the public through television where most political spending goes.

Ban political advertising by corporations that receive government money, hire lobbyists, or collect most of their revenue abroad. A fear that many observers have noted is that the Court’s ruling will allow foreign corporations to influence U.S. elections. According to The New York Times, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-New York) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) are exploring this option.

Impose a 500 percent excise tax on corporate contributions to political committees and on corporate expenditures on political advocacy campaigns. Representative Alan Grayson (D-Florida) proposes this, calling it "The Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act."

Prohibit companies from trading their stock on national exchanges if they make political contributions and expenditures. Another one from Grayson, which he calls "The Public Company Responsibility Act."

Require publicly traded companies to disclose in SEC filings money used for the purpose of influencing public opinion, rather than for promoting their products. Grayson calls this "The Corporate Propaganda Sunshine Act."

Require the corporate CEO to appear as sponsor of commercials that his or her company pays for, another possibility from the Schumer-Van Hollen team, according to The New York Times

Publicize the reform options, inform the public of who is making contributions to whom, and activate the citizenry. If we are to safeguard our democracy, media must inform and citizens must act.

The measures listed above—and others that seek to reverse the dominance of money in our political system—will not be easy. But grassroots anger at this latest win for corporate power is running high. History shows that when the public is sufficiently aroused, actions that once seemed impossible can, in hindsight, seem inevitable.

Fran Korten wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Fran is publisher of YES! Magazine.

Interested?Communities Take Power :: How small-town citizens are claiming the right to govern themselves by challenging laws stacked in favor of corporations.

Envision Spokane :: Communities around the country are using local law to promote the rights of citizens over those of corporations.

YES! Magazine encourages you to make free use of this article by taking these easy steps. Korten, F. (2010, January 25). 10 Ways to Stop Corporate Dominance of Politics. Retrieved January 30, 2010, from YES! Magazine Web site: http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/10-ways-to-stop-corporate-dominance-of-politics. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

This the second in a series of action alerts about the fundamentalwillful and pernicious errors underlying the decision by 5 agendadriven right wing judges on the Supreme Court to gut all restraintson corporate meddling in our elections. Each of these successivealerts will analyze additional derelict aspects of this shameful andtruly dangerous decision, to further demonstrate why we the peoplemust speak out and act to reverse it.

In the first alert we made the triable case (which no attorney haswritten us to dispute) that failing to even bother to distinguishbetween domestic and foreign owned corporations, and knowinglyleaving America vulnerable to the latter BY their ruling, was defacto an act of treason by The Supreme Court 5.

This alert will focus on the abandonment of every prudent rule ofjudicial review, in favor of haste and the most extreme form ofjudicial activism, again with specific page number references to theopinion itself.

There are TWO critical action pages related to this, which we areasking each of our participants to submit and also pass on toeveryone you know, which will send your message by fax to all yourown members of Congress, and President Obama too. You do not needyour own fax machine to participate, the action pages do all this foryou automatically in real time.

The most bedrock principle of appellate review is that first anappellant must have PRESERVED the issue for appeal, by arguing andgetting a ruling on the point of law from the court below,necessitating fact finding by the lower court to create a "record".Innumerable appellants since the beginning of time have had the doorto review slammed in their face with the admonition that if they HADpreserved the issue then and only then could a higher court reviewit.

And in particular, appellate courts have traditionally been loathe tomaking their own findings of fact (and only in a corrective way)absent very clear error by the Court below, which is as it should be.The role of a higher court is to apply the law to the facts, and makerulings of what the LAW is, not make their own findings of fact. Andthis is supremely true of the Supreme Court.

So even beyond the outrageousness of the result, it is at leastoutrageous the way it was reached, and how that reach was justified.As justification, The Supreme Court 5 asserted that some legalemergency existed requiring a broader inquiry in this case,resurrecting a claim already ABANDONED by the appellant in the courtbelow (opinion p. 12). Why directly overturning precedents at least20 years old would suddenly be such an emergency they do not explain.

And when you actually read the opinion, the only pressure really onthe Supreme Court was because so-called Citizens United was bound toLOSE on the case they did preserve (opinion pp. 10-11). The SupremeCourt 5 wanted that party to win. This was in itself an over the topact of judicial activism. But even beyond that they were hell bent onundoing as much as 100 years of campaign finance regulation (Stevens'dissent p. 3). Even the most conservative commentators agree this iswhat they have in fact done.

Appellate courts have been known on occasion to comment (in nobinding way) that if an appellant HAD made a particular argument theymight have been receptive to it, a kind of higher court invitationfor someone to bring an actual case, an actual "controversy". Andthen there would be a factual record in some subsequent case. Buthere there was no controversy on the issue on which the ruling wasbased, for it had already been WAIVED a priori, thereby denying theSupreme Court any jurisdiction to rule on it (Consitution ArticleIII, Section 2, Clause 1).

But even further assuming that the Supreme Court was justified inreopening a can of worms already discarded, the appropriate procedurewould have been to return the case to the lower court withinstructions, what is called a "remand", and which is done all thetime after a ruling of LAW, for the court below to make findings offact and conduct further proceedings, so that there would be afactual record for them to review, should the appellant wish toappeal to the higher court again in the case of an unfavorable rulingby the lower court.

All these prudent judicial things are exactly what the Supreme Court5 did NOT do. Instead, they called for hurry up further briefing onthe new question of law THEY wanted to rule on (Stevens' dissent p.4), in a vacuum of insufficient facts to make those arguments of law.Instead, they set a scary new purported standard of review that saysthey basically can make rulings on any point of law THEY want toraise, whether developed in a lower court by an appellant or not.

This is truly frightening! It means that these five absolutedictators in black robes have now asserted the unheard of prerogativeto make their own law pretty much any time they like, if onlytangentially related to appellant's actual arguments on appeal(opinion pp. 13-14), a profoundly dangerous NEW standard, to become anew stare decisis if not immediately challenged and reversed by theirremoval from office. It means they now assert unchecked prerogativeto make their own findings of fact whenever necessary to reach theresult THEY want to reach.

And they must be stopped. The Supreme Court 5 must be impeachedbefore they go even further off the deep end. Whatever else withinthe law that Congress can do to counteract this decision must bedone, and to make sure such a thing can never, ever happen again.

So please submit both action pages above now. The next alert in thisseries will analyze the totally bogus basis of the so-called factsthe Supreme Court pulled out of sheer hot air in this case.

NEW FOUR COLOR BUMPER STICKERS

In the meantime we are making available for no charge (not evenshipping) your choice of one of two new bumper stickers. Take a"Corporations Are NOT The People" bumper sticker, OR a "Impeach TheSupreme Court 5" bumper sticker for free. Of course if you can make acontribution (or if you want both), please DO contribute what youcan, which is what allows us to send these out for free to anyone whocannot make a donation right now.

We have engaged one of the top commercial printers in the country forprinting these, they have gone to press using the highest quality 4color process, the proofs are absolutely gorgeous, and we will betaking delivery shortly of the first run.

So you can still request your bumper sticker from the return pageafter you submit either of the action pages above to get in on thefirst shipping. Or you can do directly to this page and get themthere.

Sixteen naked young women stared at me from a contact sheet of photographs. Some stood tall; others cocked their hips in a coy slouch. One girl with short, curly hair smiled broadly. The rest seemed to be searching for something in the camera.

I scanned through each photo, noting hair color and style. I looked for tattoos and piercings, for stretch marks and scars. I searched for the right one.

Each girl held a paper with a name scrawled on it—not in front of her, but to the side.

They didn’t want to hide their tits.

When I found the one, I circled her stage name with a red marker. Sharon. Sharon glowed with a light tan. Her hair shimmered with natural blond highlights. She smiled with her big blue eyes while her full lips curled in a faint grin. And her pale pink nipples stood pert—like perfect little gumdrops. She looked like a cheerleader. Athletic. Clean-cut. Shaved.

“Does she do anal?” I asked.

My boss rustled through some papers, and then shook his head. “No, but she does boy/girl.”

“Perfect.”

An Eye Full

Maybe you know me. I’m the one who stays quiet, simply listening, as other women discuss the evils of pornography. At risk of outing myself, I choose not to share my opinions. But I have quite a few. After all, I spent three years working behind the scenes for a company publishing porn websites and DVDs.

What started as a position copyediting business proposals for an empire of porn paysites quickly evolved when my boss noticed I had an eye for photography. When he began developing a new site focusing on a select handful of premium models, he assigned me with the task of selecting them.

I spent hours watching videos, fast-forwarding through long hardcore scenes, listening to interviews and sifting through thousands of images. My role was part quality assurance, part production manager and part casting director. I called photographers to criticize them for unrealistically faked cum shots and bad lighting. I emailed models to thank them for taking the time to fill out tedious surveys about their personalities and hobbies.

I sat in my office with my hand on my mouse and made decisions that would affect the budding careers of young models who would never know my name or face.

East End Girls

Eastern Europe supplies the porn industry with thousands of fresh faces each year. Thanks to several premier erotic photographers and adult production companies in Budapest and Prague, pretty girls don’t have to look far to find work. Though video is king, photography remains popular—especially for magazines and websites marketing to US audiences.

A college student from the Czech Republic can be transformed in a flash. Oksana becomes Andrea. Stepanka becomes Stephanie.

Though not mainstream, adult industry work doesn’t have quite the same stigma in most of Europe as it does in the US. The girls I surveyed and emailed preferred modeling and acting to dancing or escort work.

Of course, not all the girls are in it for part time work. Every year a handful makes it big, leaves the world of amateur style porn for the high end DVDs and glossy magazines. One or two become legitimate porn stars, usually leaving Eastern Europe for Los Angeles.

We chose to work with Eastern European models to cut costs. Once we put the word out, our European photographers submitted hundreds of models, most of which were far too experienced. They were already all over the web, with a dozen different stage names.

But a little over fifty were truly brand new to the industry. I began to narrow them down.

Break it Down

From thousands of miles away, in an unassuming office in a strip mall, I flipped through contact sheets and dozens of handwritten biographies on my hunt for the next big thing.

Last week, over a pre-Christmas dinner, the two of us, along with political strategist Alexis McGill, filmmaker/author Eugene Jarecki, and Nick Penniman of the HuffPost Investigative Fund, began talking about the huge, growing chasm between the fortunes of Wall Street banks and Main Street banks, and started discussing what concrete steps individuals could take to help create a better financial system. Before long, the conversation turned practical, and with some help from friends in the world of bank analysis, a video and website were produced devoted to a simple idea: Move Your Money.

The big banks on Wall Street, propped up by taxpayer money and government guarantees, have had a record year, making record profits while returning to the highly leveraged activities that brought our economy to the brink of disaster. In a slap in the face to taxpayers, they have also cut back on the money they are lending, even though the need to get credit flowing again was one of the main points used in selling the public the bank bailout. But since April, the Big Four banks -- JP Morgan/Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo -- all of which took billions in taxpayer money, have cut lending to businesses by $100 billion.

Meanwhile, America's Main Street community banks -- the vast majority of which avoided the banquet of greed and corruption that created the toxic economic swamp we are still fighting to get ourselves out of -- are struggling. Many of them have closed down (or been taken over by the FDIC) over the last 12 months. The government policy of protecting the Too Big and Politically Connected to Fail is badly hurting the small banks, which are having a much harder time competing in the financial marketplace. As a result, a system which was already dangerously concentrated at the top has only become more so.

We talked about the outrage of big, bailed-out banks turning around and spending millions of dollars on lobbying to gut or kill financial reform -- including "too big to fail" legislation and regulation of the derivatives that played such a huge part in the meltdown. And as we contrasted that with the efforts of local banks to show that you can both be profitable and have a positive impact on the community, an idea took hold: why don't we take our money out of these big banks and put them into community banks? And what, we asked ourselves, would happen if lots of people around America decided to do the same thing? Our money has been used to make the system worse -- what if we used it to make the system better?

Everyone around the table quickly got excited (granted we are an excitable group), and began tossing out suggestions for how to get this idea circulating.

Eugene, the filmmaker among us, remarked that the contrast between the big banks and the community banks we were talking about was very much like the story in the classic Frank Capra film It's a Wonderful Life, where community banker George Bailey helps the people of Bedford Falls escape the grip of the rapacious and predatory banker Mr. Potter.

It was a lightbulb moment. And, unlike the vast majority of dinner conversations, the excitement over this idea didn't end with dessert. It actually led to something -- thanks in great part to Eugene and his remarkable team, who got to work and, in record time, created a brilliant, powerful, and inspiring video playing off the It's a Wonderful Life concept. (Watch it in the video player on the top right hand side of the screen).

Within a few days, the rest of the pieces fell into place, including an agreement with top financial analysts Chris Whalen and Dennis Santiago, who gave us access to their IRA (Institutional Risk Analytics) database. Using this tool, everyone will be able to plug in their zip code and quickly get a list of the small, solvent Main Street banks operating in their community.

On December 13, President Obama declared that he was not elected to help the “fat cats." But the cats got another version of that memo. A day later, 10 of them were supposed to partake in some White House face-time to talk about their responsibilities to the rest of the country, but only seven could make it. No-shows for the "very serious discussion" -- due to inclement New York weather or being too busy with internal bonus discussions to bother with the President -- were Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack and Citigroup Chairman Richard Parsons.

Yes, Obama inherited a big financial mess from the Bush administration – which inherited its set-up from the Clinton administration (financial recklessness, it turns out, is non-partisan) -- but he and his appointees have spent the year talking about fighting risk and excess on Wall Street, while both have grown.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner patted himself on the back for making the "difficult and necessary” decisions of fronting Wall Street boatloads of money to cover its losses and capital crunch last fall. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke (a Bush-Obama favorite) was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year for saving the free world as we know it. And Congress is talking "sweeping reform" about a bill that leaves the banking landscape intact, save for some minor alterations. For starters, it doesn’t resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which separated risk-taking (once non-government-backed) investment banks from consumer oriented (government-supported) commercial banks.

Meanwhile, Wall Street is restructuring (the financial equivalent of re-gifting) old toxic assets into new ones, finding fresh ways to profit from credit derivatives trading, and paying itself record bonuses -- on our dime. Despite recent TARP payback enthusiasm, the industry still floats on trillions of dollars of non-TARP subsidies and certain players wouldn’t even exist today without our help.

Wall Street’s return to robustness and Main Street’s continued deterioration are the main takeaways for 2009 that stemmed from the 2008 choices to flush the financial system with capital and leave the real economy to fend for itself. Lies that exacerbate this divide only perpetuate its growth. With that, here is my top 10 list of lies. Please consider adding your own, and let’s all hope for a more honest New Year.

1) The economy has improved.

Earlier this month, Bernanke declared, “Having faced the most serious financial crisis and the worst recession since the Great Depression, our economy has made important progress during the past year. Although the economic stress faced by many families and businesses remains intense, with job openings scarce and credit still hard to come by, the financial system and the economy have moved back from the brink of collapse."

Sure, the economy is better -- if you work at Goldman Sachs or had an affair with Tiger Woods. But while Bernanke, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Geithner turned the Federal Reserve into a national hedge fund (cheap money backing toxic assets in secrecy), and the Treasury Department into a bank insurance policy, the rest of the real economy took hit after hit -- starting with jobs.

The national unemployment rate remains at double digits. Despite Washington’s bizarre euphoria about unemployment rates last month being better (they edged down in November to 10 percent from 10.2 percent in October), the number of Americans filing for initial unemployment insurance rose during the second week of December. After all the temporary holiday hires, that number will probably increase again. Plus, unemployment rates in 372 metropolitan areas are higher than they were last year.

2) If you give banks capital, they will lend it out.

On Jan. 13, 2009 Bernanke concluded that "More capital injections and guarantees may become necessary to ensure stability and the normalization of credit markets.” He said that "Our economic system is critically dependent on the free flow of credit." He was referring to the big banks. Not the little people.

Ten months later, though, he admitted that, "Access to credit remains strained for borrowers who are particularly dependent on banks, such as households and small businesses” and that “bank lending has contracted sharply this year."

In other words, big banks don’t share their good fortunes. Shocking. And as a result, bankruptcies are rapidly rising for businesses and individuals – a direct result of lack of credit coupled with other economic hardships like job losses.

Total bankruptcy filings for the first nine months of 2009 were up 35 percent to 1,100,035 vs. the same period in 2008. The number of business bankruptcies during the first three quarters of 2009 eclipsed all of 2008. Individual consumer filings totaled 373,308 during the third quarter of 2009 and were up 33 percent vs. the same period of 2008. Tell those people about the free flow of credit, Ben.